About Don
Naturally gravitating toward places of peace and solitude, Don creates tranquil images that carry with them his intent to momentarily relieve the viewer from life's daily stresses, and help calm their soul.
In the mid 1980's, Don began photographing with a 35mm camera primarily to capture reference images for paintings. However, after discovering the highly detailed images and exceptional tonal range achievable by large format cameras, he purchased a Calumet 45N studio camera in 1988 and began his artistic journey of creating intimate, black and white, landscape photographs.
Although having studied Ansel Adam's "Zone System" which based black and white photography on a 10 stop range and then push or pull processing film that was outside of that range, Don slightly altered the system to work within his low light subjects that commonly have only about a 7 stop range. As part of Don's alteration to the zone system, he devised a way to create a "step wedge" negative going from no exposure to 7 1/2 stops, which allowed him to test precise ASA and development time for his film. Part of Don's learning process was to never bracket exposures, believing that you force yourself to become your best only when you resist giving yourself a fallback. With an artist's patience, Don commonly walks around a subject for 10-30 minutes, scrutinizing it to find the composition he desires.
Experimenting with hand colored photographs began while Don still only photographed with 35mm. Initial experimenting consisted of many different processes including colored pencil, pastel, and airbrush. Not long after switching to 4x5 photography, Don settled on standard oil paints thinned with an oil painting medium. In early 2017 Don began making his own oil paints made simply with raw powdered pigments and walnut oil and currently exclusively uses these handmade paints.
In the mid 1980's, Don began photographing with a 35mm camera primarily to capture reference images for paintings. However, after discovering the highly detailed images and exceptional tonal range achievable by large format cameras, he purchased a Calumet 45N studio camera in 1988 and began his artistic journey of creating intimate, black and white, landscape photographs.
Although having studied Ansel Adam's "Zone System" which based black and white photography on a 10 stop range and then push or pull processing film that was outside of that range, Don slightly altered the system to work within his low light subjects that commonly have only about a 7 stop range. As part of Don's alteration to the zone system, he devised a way to create a "step wedge" negative going from no exposure to 7 1/2 stops, which allowed him to test precise ASA and development time for his film. Part of Don's learning process was to never bracket exposures, believing that you force yourself to become your best only when you resist giving yourself a fallback. With an artist's patience, Don commonly walks around a subject for 10-30 minutes, scrutinizing it to find the composition he desires.
Experimenting with hand colored photographs began while Don still only photographed with 35mm. Initial experimenting consisted of many different processes including colored pencil, pastel, and airbrush. Not long after switching to 4x5 photography, Don settled on standard oil paints thinned with an oil painting medium. In early 2017 Don began making his own oil paints made simply with raw powdered pigments and walnut oil and currently exclusively uses these handmade paints.